Understanding the role of DevOps for Startups, SMBs and Large Enterprises
Software development nowadays is a demanding task that calls for enterprises of all sizes to deliver innovative and quality software at top speed. One of the few ways to keep up with the demand is by implementing the DevOps methodology.?
As hard as it is to believe that DevOps is a universal, all-in-one miracle solution for every business, keep reading to learn more about what DevOps is, and why DevOps outsourcing is a vital investment no matter where you are on your journey.
What is DevOps and what are the benefits of Implementing DevOps?
DevOps?is a set of best practices and tools used by teams to improve software products and make faster and more secure software delivery. By bringing IT operations and development together, this methodology enables businesses to establish short production life cycles and maximum efficiency from the get-go, and secure the best tools for future scaling. DevOps accelerates the time-to-market, reduces operating costs, and provides a highly efficient, easily scalable environment.
How can DevOps help you achieve better functionality?
- 105x deploy to production.
- 80%+ decrease in outages and downtimes.
- 20% speed to market.
- 25x software delivery.
- 10x reduces development costs.
- 10x less time restoring service failure.
Main DevOps Practices and DevOps Technical Principles
- Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
Every DevOps strategy includes continuous integration and continuous delivery/deployment principle. CI/CD helps you automate processes, reduce the costs of testing, and enable faster release building.
Continuous integration is all about frequently updating your code repository. It is achieved by merging every code change and running automated tests to check validity.
The main objective of continuous delivery is to upload the build and all its subsequent changes to an environment for testing and production.
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
The practice syncs your environments and enables fast and accurate testing so you can expect a reduction in sudden undocumented inconsistencies.
- Infrastructure automation and management
This mainly helps to free up employees’ time to focus on more complex and critical issues and ensure better infrastructure management. Infrastructure management solutions generate automatic notifications in case of an emergency thus helping resolve issues as soon as they appear. Automation helps manage complex infrastructures without reducing their scalability.
- Testing automation
Robust and effective testing automation allows you to:
-increase the frequency of testing, enabling faster deployment;
-reduce errors derived from manual repetitive testing;?
-free up the teams to focus on high-profile tasks that cannot be automated.
- Cloud services
Cloud computing is a powerful tool allowing effective data management and enhanced development speed. DevOps cloud services allow you to:
-migrate your infrastructure to the cloud or benefit from a hybrid solution;
-have better automation;
-exactly calculate costs and plan cost optimization for your existing cloud infrastructure;
-improve security;
-merge development, testing, and deployment in an all-in-one platform;
-ensure your IT infrastructure is scalable.
- Security management
DevSecOps exists to implement security measures, ensuring higher reliability of the system. It is comprised of:?
-cloud security threats detection and prevention;
-DDoS attacks prevention;
-regular vulnerability checks, security and compliance testing;
-VPN firewall.
- Automated monitoring and logging
Ðutomated monitoring and logging collect data about the performance of your apps and products and reduce the Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Recover (MTTR).
This helps significantly reduce the time users have to experience issues and additional expenses.
- Release management
DevOps release management helps streamline the development and operation processes.
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- Configuration management
There are several testing environments established that your app has to pass before reaching its end-users and each of them has a configuration that gets more complex as the update comes closer to the production stage. Conducting manual version control and version management of these environments is a great risk and resource waste.
DevOps allows for automated configuration management from the get-go so that teams can easily monitor, load, and control all configurations through a handy solution.???
To help you discover all the required resources and considerations to successfully embrace the DevOps methodology and fully reap all of its benefits you may check out our most exhaustive guide on “How to transition to DevOps?â€.
Can DevOps be outsourced and why? DevOps outsourcing vs in-house teams: differences to consider
Intuitively, you might feel that in-house DevOps teams work more closely and deliver projects more effectively. However, there are many reasons why choosing DevOps consulting is better.
Hiring an in-house DevOps team means many additional costs for staffing needs such as workplace, salaries, equipment costs, etc. Since the team would start from scratch, it would need to build the infrastructure and set all processes which are big costs on their own. Moreover, a DevOps team in your internal workflow would be distracted with internal tasks, thus losing focus and efficiency.
Also, being a part of the development circle, it becomes extremely hard for the team to develop a detached view, which often leads to compromised quality.
On the other hand, DevOps outsourcing services from a trusted provider allow you to benefit from significant experience working with different types of cross-industry projects, thus handling various issues and unforeseen scenarios more effectively and best adapting all applicable DevOps practices for maximum business growth.?
Benefits of DevOps outsourcing:?
- Access to DevOps industry Top Talent
With DevOps-as-a-service, you can benefit from a wide talent pool. While finding a qualified DevOps consultant is difficult, discovering engineers with narrow expertise is almost impossible locally. On the other hand, DevOps companies hire the best professionals, help build their high-profile expertise and nurture an environment of continuous learning and development.?
- Access to deep Technical Expertise backed up by Solid Experience
DevOps engineers in DevOps companies are highly skilled from working on various projects involving complex infrastructures and setups. Additionally, they are well informed on the latest technology solutions, trends, and best practices and can help you discover your best fit and most innovative solution for your specific use case. Moreover, backed up with cross-industry experience, they are well aware of all industry-specific regulatory requirements, so DevOps consultants can help you prevent any security and legal issues.
- Additional competencies and skills
Hiring a team of DevOps engineers guarantees you access to a pool of expertise, rather than just a one-person experience. This is very valuable since most projects require cross-technical implementation and one person could hardly keep up with the complexity level of every single tech that is out there, no matter how qualified he is.?
In addition to providing extra skills, you are provided with the possibility to distribute tasks better. You can dedicate complex tasks to senior DevOps professionals and leave the maintenance to less experienced ones.
DevOps for Startups, SMBs, and Large enterprises
In the lines above, we have understood why DevOps is a crucial and indispensable methodology for the efficient functioning of businesses of any size. Let’s now take a closer look at the specifics of DevOps adoption and how DevOps outsourcing gives a competitive edge to enterprises of different scales.
- DevOps for Startups and SMBs
Startups and SMBs often choose DevOps outsourcing as it helps them reap the benefits of the full range of professional DevOps services without having to support the costly and time-consuming commitment of creating an in-house DevOps department. And as we all well know, strategic time and cost management are of key importance for the successful.?
Faced with the choice of building an in-house team or hiring expert DevOps consulting services, a startup or SMB can try to master the DevOps methodology and set up all the processes. However, training requires time and additional financial costs. At the scale of a startup and SMB, DevOps consulting services assist in the adequate roadmap for the business processes, giving the company an undeniable advantage over competitors. A DevOps consulting company has extensive experience to help choose the best-fit DevOps toolchain, smoothly collaborate with and train internal teams and streamline business operations thus driving real business value.?
While DevOps may seem difficult to implement at first, it can only provide long-term benefits once you get professional support. It helps establish easily scalable IT environments that are the foundation for any startup’s rapid growth.
- DevOps for Large Enterprises
Large enterprises face a different challenge with the forming of a DevOps department: a shortage of qualified candidates locally. The DevOps profile requires deep operational and security experience.?
Also bear in mind that in-house DevOps specialists gradually get used to one scope of tasks and types of projects and new tech stacks and projects might be a challenge for them. Hiring new specialists with the appropriate skills may not still be an option. In this case, DevOps outsourcing companies can help with the specific needs of your business. Those companies continuously train and mentor their staff, ensuring the latest innovation and tools in the industry are mastered. DevOps engineers with certificate-proven tech skills and profound experience provide vast expertise in various fields, including understanding the best DevOps practices, DevOps toolchain, security skills, and automation skills. Large enterprises often need a broad scope of DevOps services so DevOps consulting is a great way to ensure a steady business flow.??
What to expect from DevOps-as-a-service??
The main idea of DevOps consulting (DevOps-as-a-service) is to provide a wide set of DevOps services to automate workflows thus improving productivity and reducing human error during the software delivery lifecycle (SDLC).???
DevOps consulting is focused on the implementation and/or training of the client’s employees on how to use the best DevOps practices and technologies. The exact scope of DevOps consulting entirely depends on the business needs.?
DevOps service providers dispose of specialized software solutions, the latest tools, and top talent in driving faster and better software delivery. Thus, companies are able to save time, resources, and costs.
Some of the areas that you might expect a DevOps provider to work on are:
- Maintenance of IT infrastructure: DevOps providers can help reduce incidents and provide faster and more accurate testing by using Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
- Automation of the workflow and infrastructure management: DevOps engineers can develop winning strategies for automating many repetitive tasks so that your internal IT teams can focus on core business objectives.
- Automated testing: Manual testing is a very time-consuming task and prone to errors. Automation testing ensures a faster, more effective, and cost-efficient process.
- Cloud migration: It offers at your disposal a robust, easily scalable system and access to essential software resources for software development.
- Focus on security:?DevSecOps aims at providing appropriate security by executing regular security checks and determining any potential system vulnerabilities.
How to start with DevOps outsourcing?
DevOps outsourcing helps streamline infrastructure processes and thus improve the software quality, efficiency, and delivery pace. However, DevOps simply isn’t just a toolset, but a mix of cultural, development, and operational changes. As might be expected, transforming your company’s culture and operational model is a tough, but rewarding task. A DevOps services provider will help you smoothly transition and adequately and quickly adapt all practices to fully benefit from the DevOps methodology. To make sure you jump into DevOps outsourcing well prepared, we have put together all needed resources and steps you’d go through in our “Complete Guide to DevOps Outsourcingâ€.
Why choose ITGix?
As a?trusted DevOps services provider company, ITGix helps organizations of all sizes reap all the benefits of DevOps practices. Apart from obtaining substantial expertise with all high-profile technologies, we have extensive experience working on cross-industry projects with clients of all shapes and sizes. ITGix expert DevOps team brings unparalleled industry-specific, deep technical know-how across a range of DevOps tools and services to provide true value to your business.
If you have a specific use case we might help you with, don’t hesitate to?contact us?today!